Asiana Airlines to change number of Seoul-S.F. flight after crash

An Asiana Airlines Boeing 777 crash-landed at San Francisco Airport on July 6, 2013. Three schoolgirls from China died and dozens others were injured. The plane was carrying 307 people.

Kate Mather

Asiana Airlines confirmed Tuesday that it will change the number of the flight between Seoul and San Francisco in the wake of the July crash that left three people dead and more than 180 others injured.

Airline spokesman Suh Ki-Won said that beginning Monday, Flight 214 from Seoul to San Francisco will be renumbered to Flight 212. Flight 213, from San Francisco to Seoul, will change to Flight 211.

"The reason for the change is that many people remember the flight number," he said, adding that the airline didn't want its customers to have "that kind of image."

It was Flight 214 in which the plane clipped a seawall and slammed into a runway while landing at San Francisco International Airport on July 6, breaking the tail off the Boeing 777 and throwing some passengers and crew out of the jet.

Two 16-year-old girls from China were pronounced dead at the scene, including one who was killed by a firetruck responding to the crash. Another teenage girl, also from China, died at a San Francisco hospital days later. The girls were high school classmates, Chinese media reported.